Comments on: Coming soon – phone directory app for the BlackBerry Storm

By: blackberry

blackberry — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:22:59 +0000

Seems as though BlackBerry are trying to compete with Apple’s iPhone, and with the news that Apple sold 8.7 million iPhone handsets in Q4 of 2009, BlackBerry have got a long way to go!

By: blackberry

blackberry — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:22:00 +0000

Seems as though BlackBerry are trying to compete with Apple’s iPhone, and with the news that Apple sold 8.7 million iPhone handsets in Q4 of 2009, BlackBerry have got a long way to go!

By: Seymour Tsukamoto

Seymour Tsukamoto — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:24:37 +0000

Interesting read. There is currently quite a lot of information around this subject around and about on the net and some are most defintely better than others. You have caught the detail here just right which makes for a refreshing change – thanks.

By: Seymour Tsukamoto

Seymour Tsukamoto — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:24:00 +0000

By: mercilesshadow

mercilesshadow — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:59:30 +0000

I could really use a phone book app for my bb8330 please help me with this I have #s I gotta lpopok up all day long it’s annoying really I need something qwik and easy to look up #s easly….

By: mercilesshadow

mercilesshadow — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:59:00 +0000

I could really use a phone book app for my bb8330 please help me with this I have #s I gotta lpopok up all day long it’s annoying really I need something qwik and easy to look up #s easly….

By: Mash

Mash — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:20:44 +0000

I completely agree with you, Damian. The Storm phone book is a huge fail. I think the lack of efficiency in the phone book has made me slightly more antisocial, haha. I just saw the video for Blinding Rain’s application. It looks great, but I wish it would optimize using the phone book on the storm. When I want to call Bob, I should be able to click on Bob and just call the number I usually reach Bob on. I don’t want to pick through every phone number Bob can be reached at every time I need to call him. Same goes for SMS.

For those that have used/tested this app:
I like the directory and phone number look up features, but can the addresses be used in GPS navigation? More specifically, can I say starting point “where I am” and ending point, the address of the place i just looked up, without out having to copy/paste the address? Also if there is anyway to build in a restaurant review look up on yelp, citysearch, zagat, etc, that would be amazing. I have yet to see a way to look up a quality restaurant quickly and within walking distance of where I am on the storm without using more than one application.

By: Mash

Mash — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:20:00 +0000

By: Damian Vines

Damian Vines — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 04:40:19 +0000

Mash, I agree with you about the phone application. This is the worst phone application I’ve ever seen. It’s a 5 or 6 button action just to get a call out from your address book, this is ridiculous! Big Fail on the phone application.

I always thought, how hard is it to make it work like the previous keyboard style BB’s, meaning, on the Storm if you press the convenience button that brings up the keyboard, start typing a name and it instantly starts narrowing down your address book just like it does on all the other BB’s, once you narrow the list and see your contact, click it and it calls them, or at least brings up the “call which number” pop-up.
Attempting this now, only brings you to the phone application, where you have to start from scratch again and most of the time locks up the phone.

My other gripe related to this is, when you do finally find the name you want to call in your address book, you would think that on a touch screen phone, that you could just click the address book entry to call that person, but oh no, not the case, clicking the name only brings you to the “view contact” screen where you have to click the menu button and then click on the tiny “call work” or “call mobile” link. This is a touch phone, when you find the item you need, the default action should be to click on the screen, not find the name, highlight it, and then hit the green call button. This is a big FAIL.

Is there a way for a 3rd party app to improve this?

By: Damian Vines

Damian Vines — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 04:40:00 +0000

Is there a way for a 3rd party app to improve this?

By: Mash

Mash — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:00:47 +0000

This company needs to spell check its website. Dissapointed? If you expect to sell this application, you should really run a spell check and content check. Also, you are building apps for the storm, so why are implying that it is a frustrating phone to own: “You see, we started as frustrated users, not with the Storm, but with…” This distracts from your mission.

That said, this seems like a useful application and if my phone wasn’t busy freezing and restarting itself, maybe I could use it. I agree that it’s frustrating that I have to constantly retype things and copy paste to get info from one place to another. Poynt often misses addresses of existing places (and I’m in nyc, come on!) or it will return the address and not give me option to map the location. It would be great to have a restaurant review and directory app that’s convenient, available at one touch, and plays well with GPS navigation on bbmaps (so I can get directions, not just map the location). I also am frustrated with how many clicks are required to get from the phone book to the phone call.

By: Mash

Mash — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:00:00 +0000

By: rothbart

rothbart — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:22:23 +0000

My biggest gripe with the storm is that it crashes/reboots on me all the time. Sometimes it does it in the middle of a call. There are even some times a battery pull doesn’t seem to snap it out of its funk and I’ll have to do 2-3 before it’ll boot up. When it works, I love it… if it doesn’t settle down when the new OS is released (later this month… *crosses fingers*) I’m going to return it as defective and try another unit.

As for the apps, I REALLY like apps that integrate themselves both into and with other portions of the phone. I like that navigation software can add a “navigate to” option in other apps, I like it when apps can pull contact info from my phonebook, etc. I don’t want to have to retype any info I don’t have to… why on earth there isn’t an “insert email address” option on the keyboard I have no idea… I must have typed it 100 times so far.

I also don’t like it when location-sensitive apps don’t have any info for my town. I live in one of the five largest cities in my state… why do some apps (Poynt) recommend stuff in completely different towns yet miss the (not new) businesses a couple miles away?

By: rothbart